I became the Leadership Editor of Forbes in December 2008, just as the American business world was crashing down and taking the jobs and homes of millions with it. Had I started the job a year or two earlier, I might have found that covering things like how to be a manager, corporate strategy, risk management, governance, and corporate social responsibility was worthy but possibly sometimes a little dull. Now I found that my beat was everything that had gone terribly wrong and was going to have to go very right to get us all back to prosperity. Since then, I've had the pleasure of publishing some of the world's best minds on every aspect of leadership.
Previously I was a senior editor of Forbes magazine, and before that I was for many years the managing editor of American Heritage and the editor of the quarterly Invention & Technology. I've emceed the annual induction ceremony at the National Inventors Hall of Fame, done the play-by-play over the P.A. system on a cruise ship as it passed through the Panama Canal, and written on the history of bourbon whiskey and the making of Steinway pianos, among many, many other things. I prepared for all that by majoring in music in college and writing a senior thesis on the music of Hector Berlioz.
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Has the NRA Critically Wounded Itself?

After the mass murder in an elementary school in Newtown Connecticut, on Friday, December 14, some formerly unyielding gun-rights supporters in Congress began to change their views, and it started to look as if the National Rifle Association’s total power to bock any gun control legislation might be beginning to crack, as I reported here. Then yesterday, after a week of total silence, the NRA emerged, with its executive vice president, Wayne LaPierre, giving a press statement in which he dismissed the possibility of any new controls whatever on assault weapons or ammunition magazines or gun sales. Rather he devoted his remarks to blaming mass murders on everyone from gun control supporters to video game producers and calling for a “national school shield safety program” that would essentially turn every school building in America into an armed fortress, every schoolyard into a war zone.

This proposal has found some supporters, but it has also provoked broad revulsion that might lead more Americans to see the NRA as a radical organization, the supporter not so much of ordinary gun owners as of gun manufacturers and sellers. And this might make it more possible for congressmen and senators who have been unyielding in their fealty to the organization to show some independence from its demands.

The New YorkPost, an editorially very conservative paper that belongs to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation (albeit a paper in a very liberal city), ran the front page shown above today, with the headline “GUN NUT! NRA loon in bizarre rant over Newtown.” New York’s other tabloid daily, the Daily News, offered “CRAZIEST MAN ON EARTH: Just 90 MINUTES after moment of silence for Newtown victims, vile NRA nut blames everyone and everything EXCEPT the GUNS.”

Michael Steele, former chairman of the Republican National Committee, wasn’t shrill like the New York papers, but he was just as perplexed. When asked his response to LaPierre’s statement, he was at first silent, and then said, “I don’t know where to begin. . . . I just found it very haunting and very disturbing that we are country talking about arming our teachers and principals in classrooms. What does that say about us? . . . I do not believe that is the response that should be coming out of the tragedy in Newtown.” Michael Bloomberg, the sometimes Republican mayor of New York, called the NRA briefing “a shameful evasion of the crisis facing our country . . . a paranoid, dystopian vision.” Republican Gov. Chris Christie of New Jerseysaid, “I don’t think that the solution to safety in schools is putting [in] armed guard . . . you’d have to have an armed guard outside every classroom. [And] you don’t want to make this an armed camp for kids.” John Cornyn of Texas, one of the most powerful Republicans in the Senate, said, “I always think making decisions when you’re angry or scared leads to worse decisions.”

Many across America, including some in Congress and some in Newtown, have voiced support for the NRA’s plan to make every school in the country into a fortress protected by unarmed shooters, but there are clearly cracks in the facade of the association’s power as never before. I couldn’t help noticing that back on Tuesday, when I wrote “Is the Mighty NRA Beginning to Topple,” the comments it received where mostly pro-NRA. Yesterday, when I wrote “NRA Proposes to Turn Every School Into an Armed Fortress,” the comments were overwhelmingly, almost entirely, anti-NRA. Maybe the way millions of Americans feel is beginning to change. As one of my commenters yesterday wrote, “It seems NRA is trying to make lemonade . . . morally wrong, likely to backfire on them.”

So you have to wonder if we won’t soon be hearing more voices like this commenter’s: “Face it. The NRA doesn’t give a damn about our kids. They see this as another chance to sell more guns for the Industry they REALLY serve (Not responsible gun owners, but manufacturers).”

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I know a lot of Police, who barely qualify on their shooting test (some would do better throwing the gun at the threat than try to shoot at them), older officers can not see as well as some of the younger officers. And, if you think the good ole boy system doesn’t fudge shooting scores to qualify buddies so they can keep their jobs… you are all naive.

Cut Police Officers pay in half and hire additional younger officers with the pay cut difference. Corporations do it all the time. They lay off older more experience workers for younger less experienced workers for less wages and get more work done. Think… Police get paid 65,000 to 85,000 per year. Cut each salary in half and hire twice as many police to do more serving and protecting. Besides, your not loosing an older Police Officer when they can easily be hired as an armed security guard, they can work two or three jobs to make up the difference in pay, like every other hard working American.

True story… many years ago, while driving to Hartford Hospital Connecticut to visit my father and just before the tiered parking lot entrance, I noted to my right, a very attractive young white lady (maybe a nurse) walking by herself on the walkway, walking behind her, some distance between them, was a clean cut well dressed black male in his mid 20s, who looked like a city resident. The lady stopped, turned to her left (appeared she wanted to cross the street), I stopped my vehicle to allow her to cross the roadway leading into the tiered Hospital parking lot. The black male hastily made up the distance, following her still, I thought that was really odd he had to use the lot too. I slowly continued driving left into the entrance and after passing them both, I veered right, all the while observing them in my right side and rear view mirror, a pick-up truck had also entered the tiered parking lot. Then, the black male rushed the white lady grabbing her long strapped hand bag, she was screaming HELP! Somebody do something! I was about 50 ft beyond them, I stopped my car, got out and was about to assist her. The black male broke free her handbag, turned and ran into the front of the pick-up truck. He fell to the ground, but recovered and ran around the driver’s door as it was opening. The startled pick up truck driver had just opened his door to assist the young lady, who was still screaming for help and insulting everyone for not doing anything! I was legally carrying my concealed handgun, thinking how stupid she was for NOT be fully aware of her surroundings. LADY… It was just a handbag! Had the black male brandished a knife or gun in his hand or used either on her, one can only wonder what the out come would have been. The Hartford Police was called and information provided them. The clean cut, well dressed black male was never caught. Again, police are reactive, not proactive, they can not be everywhere 24/7 to serve and protect each and everyone of us. People have to be FULLY aware of their surroundings and personal zones when situations arise and someone is behaving strangely. You have to cautiously think… is he or she a threat to me? The enemy (in this case a thief) doesn’t have to brandish a weapon to harm you, they can steal your property from you.

True story… many years ago, while driving to Hartford Hospital Connecticut to visit my father and just before the tiered parking lot entrance, I noted to my right, a very attractive young white lady (maybe a nurse) walking by herself on the walkway, walking behind her, some distance between them, was a clean cut well dressed black male in his mid 20s, who looked like a city resident. The lady stopped, turned to her left (appeared she wanted to cross the street), I stopped my vehicle to allow her to cross the roadway leading into the tiered Hospital parking lot. The black male hastily made up the distance, following her still, I thought that was really odd he had to use the lot too. I slowly continued driving left into the entrance and after passing them both, I veered right, all the while observing them in my right side and rear view mirror, a pick-up truck had also entered the tiered parking lot. Then, the black male rushed the white lady grabbing her long strapped hand bag, she was screaming HELP! Somebody do something! I was about 50 ft beyond them, I stopped my car, got out and was about to assist her. The black male broke free her handbag, turned and ran into the front of the pick-up truck. He fell to the ground, but recovered and ran around the driver’s door as it was opening. The startled pick up truck driver had just opened his door to assist the young lady, who was still screaming for help and insulting everyone for not doing anything! I was legally carrying my concealed handgun, thinking how stupid she was for NOT be fully aware of her surroundings. LADY… It was just a handbag! Had the black male brandished a knife or gun in his hand or used either on her, one can only wonder what the out come would have been. The Hartford Police was called and information provided them. The clean cut, well dressed black male was never caught. Again, police are reactive, not proactive, they can not be everywhere 24/7 to serve and protect each and everyone of us. People have to be FULLY aware of their surroundings and personal zones when situations arise and someone is behaving strangely. You have to cautiously think… is he or she a threat to me? The enemy (in this case a thief) doesn’t have to brandish a weapon to harm you, they can steal your property from you.

Yes, because we know that all of the gun control proponents (who are professionals at lying through their teeth and purposely misleading the public about many issues regarding guns and gun laws), would never seek to exploit a tragedy involving many children slaughtered in order to advance their agenda. We all know that they care so greatly about the children.

And BTW, this nonsense about the NRA serving the gun manufacturers has got to stop. Gun manufacturing is a tiny industry, only about $12 billion. Exxon-Mobil is one company and had revenues of $483 billion last year. Chevron had revenues of $254 billion. Wal-Mart had revenues of $447 billion. Bank of America had revenues of $115.7 billion. Goldman-Sachs had revenues of $37 billion. General Dynamics had revenue of $32 billion. Lockheed-Martin had revenues of $46 billion. And so forth.

THESE ARE LOBBIES. The defense lobby, the financial lobby, the oil lobby, etc…that’s real power. A little $12 billion industry doesn’t have the financial resources to be a major lobbying power in Washington. This is another one of the lies perpetuated by the gun control activists. What gives the NRA its influence is the American people that support it. That’s all.

There are a lot of cry babies and ninnies screaming for gun control. News flash to cry babies and ninnies, guns are out the and evil is out there. Please look at the picture and you may understand why there are no school shootings in Israel.

http://www.standeyo.com/NEWS/12_Pics_of_Day/121214.pic.of.day.c.html

Or are we just victims ripe for the slaughter. Bear in mind, the shooters are cowards, that is why they go for the small and the unarmed. That is why they take the cowards way out when confrontation seems eminent.

What I don’t understand is why you journalists are clamoring for the “assault weapons” ban to be reinstated when it was demonstrated to have absolutely no effect on crime, despite considerable impingement on the lawful activities of normal folks. What’s more, if gun control is so effective, then why have would-be murderers been least common and stopped with many fewer casualties in the places with the most permissive restrictions? CN already has some of the strictest gun restrictions in the nation and it didn’t stop Newtown. Try listening to someone who actually knows what they’re talking about: http://larrycorreia.wordpress.com/2012/12/20/an-opinion-on-gun-control/

Fine lets call the NRA’s bluff. We have a lot of well trained unemployed ex military back from Irag and Afghanistan, let’s hire them as full time guards – only the costs are born by a tax on gun owners by type of gun owned – low on hunting weapons, high on assault style weapons

No, this won’t hurt the NRA but I wished they would have pointed out that “nearly 1/2 of public schools have police presence” to shut up those that think the idea is out of the universe. US Taxpayers have been funding police at schools for a long time, over a decade.

The NRA has shot itself in the foot. It vehemently opposes gun registration, yet calls for all mentally ill patients to be registered. They call for armed guards in every school, yet opposes the funding of extra guards. Double standards don’t work.

hand guns , automatic weapons and assault rifles have absolutely no use in hunting , there only purpose is to kill people . they should only be used in the military or police forces by people that are trained to use and respect them as what they are . The problem in the states is fear . Fear brought on by too many guns in the public’s hands . eliminate the guns and the fear dissipates . I live in Vancouver and have nephews that live in the states , should I arm myself when I go to visit my relatives , according to the NRA yes I should . Should the NRA arm all visitors to the states , probably a good idea as per the NRA . I for one will not visit the USA until they have eliminated weapons of mass destruction ( as per boom boom bush) . I recommend to travelers of the world , boycott travel to the USA save yourselves the stress and possibly your lives . America wake up and change and enforce your gun laws they are three hundred years out of date .